How To Be An Imitator of God

It’s that time
of year when I’m ready for it to be November.I love November first when all the sinister decorations of spiders,
cobwebs, witches, and evil-faced pumpkins are put away and replaced with happy
harvest decorations featuring an attitude of gratitude.

On Halloween
night, countless kids will be dressed up in costume s doing their best to
imitate their favorite cartoon character, super hero, etc. If they’ve done a
good job, we will be able to recognize at a glance exactly who they are imitating.

But Halloween
isn’t just for kids. Grown-ups are increasingly dressing up as their favorite
TV, movie, and sports personalities—and doing so quite impressively. So when we
see a tall, skinny man, dressed in a crushed velvet suit with a top hat and a
cane weinstantly recognize him as Willy
Wonka from the chocolate factory. Why? The reason he was so recognizable was he
devoted himself to learning what Willy Wonka looks like--then went out and got
an identical hat, cane, and purple crushed velvet suit, so when people saw him
they instantly recognized him as Willy Wonka.

It wouldn’t have been
enough just to wear any old top hat and suit—and grab any old cane.The top hat, suit, and cane combo could make
us think of a variety of people. We might think of Fred Astaire in Top Hat, Jim
Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, or Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka. They all use a top
hat, suit, and a cane in their dress, but their characters are so different and
imitating them would require carefully study to correctly imitate one of those
particular characters.

But being
imitators is not reserved for people on Halloween or actors in Hollywood. As
Christians we are to be imitators of God, by putting on Christ, 365 days of the year. (Rom. 13:14) As people who
profess to be Believers, it is so important we correctly represent the Lord
Jesus to the people around us. So how do we be imitators of God (Eph.
5:1)? While it is good to ask "What would Jesus do?” the best way to
imitate God is to devote ourselves to knowing God.

The best way we
are going to learn who the Lord is so we can effectively reflect Him to the
people around us on a daily basis is by familiarizing ourselves with what the
Word reveals about Him. No one can properly imitate someone they know for the
most part. Professional imitators, who imitate celebrities and such, devote
themselves to learning everything they can about the person they are imitating
and then they rehearse over and over--always seeking to imitate the person
better than before. As my pastor once said, "If that is how one man imitates
another man, how much more ought we to go to such lengths to imitate God?"

May we be like
actors, who pour over their scripts to perfect their character, and pour over
Scripture meditating on it, memorizing it, praying through it, and studying it so
when people see us, rather than us, they would see Jesus, Just as a
professional imitator will never perfectly imitate a celebrity, but will
get impressively close, we are not always going to perfectly reflect Jesus
on this side of heaven. However, like the professional imitators, by God’s
Spirit we can get awfully close if we pour ourselves into knowing
the Lord, through His Word, and ask God to reveal Himself to us
so we may correctly represent Him to the people He puts in our
path and they, in turn, would be drawn to Christ.